Enlarge The Brass Connection plays at Saturdays on Selwyn.

Posted: August 4th, 2011 Carolyn Steeves

The oppressive heat may have kept the crowd small, but The Brass Connection brought a cool funk July 30 at Saturdays on Selwyn, a free summer outdoor concert series with Crossroads Charlotte Artist-in-Residence Quentin "Q" Talley as emcee. The event features a different local band each week, while encouraging community building through music and mingling.

“We enjoy doing what we do, it doesn’t matter if we’re playing to 100,000 people or two people. We enjoy it no matter what,” said Michael Taylor, founder of The Brass Connection. The band, which plays a variety of songs from Top 40 to Motown, features Taylor's young son on trombone. "It's just a big family thing," he said. “We hope that everybody enjoys what we do, because we enjoy it,” Taylor said. 

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Posted: August 3rd, 2011 Greg Lacour

Some stories worth sharing this week:

• Today is Peter Gorman’s last day as superintendent of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. He’s leaving quietly. No farewell reception. No public statement. No exit interview with the press. Why? Do you think CMS is better or worse after five years of Gorman at the helm?

• You may remember the news from a few weeks ago about Erick Velazquillo, a 22-year-old Central Piedmont Community College student threatened with deportation even though he’d been in the United States since he was 2. Immigration officials decided to drop deportation efforts.

• Longtime Charlotte civil rights attorney James Ferguson has founded a group called the Carolina Regional Minority Partnership Coalition to push Democratic National Convention organizers to hire minority-owned businesses for services, supplies and support.

• Nice story here about a Mexican cultural exchange program called Jóvenes en Acción (“Youth In Action”) that allowed a group of young people to spend two weeks in Charlotte, learning lessons about leadership and education they can take home.

• Charlotte attorney Ken Harris represented the family of Darryl Turner, a 17-year-old boy who died in March 2008 after a Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer shot him in the chest with a Taser, in a lawsuit against Taser International. Last week, a jury in U.S. District Court in Charlotte awarded the Turner family a damage award of $10 million--only the second time the Arizona company had ever lost a suit. QCityMetro.com conducted this interview with Harris. Tasers are billed as a less deadly way for police officers to incapacitate criminals, but suspects still die from Taser shocks. What, if anything, do you think should be done?

Posted: July 28th, 2011 Amanda Pagliarini

“Someone who doesn’t feel good about themselves.” 

This was a young boy’s response to the question, "What is a bully?" 

The performers of Opera Express engaged the children at Shalom Park Freedom School in a dialogue about bullying and friendship after performing their similarly themed version of The Billy Goats Gruff. About 50 Freedom School students, from kindergarten to fifth grade, enjoyed the operatic version of the fairytale about three billy goats and a bullying troll. The performance and the dialogue that followed focused on seeing the humanity in bullies and using kindness to breed kindness.

Shalom Park Freedom School is a collaborative effort to provide free, quality summer education programs for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools students in underserved areas. The first Jewish-run Freedom School in the country, students take park in a six-week literacy and enrichment program in an effort to combat summer break learning loss.

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Posted: July 27th, 2011 Greg Lacour

Some stories worth sharing this week:

• After a six-week standoff, the Charlotte City Council has finally released $7.5 million to the Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority following the demotion of longtime CEO Tim Newman. Council members had withheld the money from the city’s tourism wing because of questions over management and spending practices.


• Whoever the CRVA board hires as its new CEO will no doubt have to pay close attention to the new Center City 2020 Vision Plan, a document that lays out a course for uptown and the neighborhoods immediately surrounding the Interstate 277 loop. It’s a $750,000 study paid for jointly by the city, Mecklenburg County and Charlotte Center City Partners.


• Charities in Charlotte and elsewhere in the region are reeling from the news that the federal government is cutting emergency grant funding in half or more. “We are extremely grateful that they gave us an allocation, but we just wish the dollars weren’t as few as they are,” says Richard Heins, a United Way of Central Carolinas vice president. "It's very tough for critical needs charities, because the needs continue to rise."


• In the backwash of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ contentious decision to close or consolidate 11 of its schools, a divide is growing between the school board and county commissioners over which school construction and renovation projects to tackle first.


• The Gray Classic Golf Tournament in Ballantyne has always been a Y-chromosome kind of event, but this year it added a feminine touch: a Women’s Empowerment Brunch, in which more than 125 women gathered to encourage and bond with each other.